The present invention generally relates to detection of substances, and more particularly, the detection of chemical, biological, radioactive, and other substances by a light scattering probe and a chemical sensor.
Light scattering techniques such as Raman spectroscopy are known to be capable of identifying chemicals and biological agents. A major limitation associated with Raman spectroscopy is that the Raman scattering signals from chemicals and biological agents tend to be very weak. Although many attempts have been made to increase Raman scattering intensity, such efforts have not yielded practical and economical detectors based on Raman spectroscopy. As a result, Raman scattering so far only has very limited applications in sensing chemicals and biological agents.
A need therefore exists for effective and practical Raman spectroscopy based detectors for trace amount of chemical, biological, radioactive and other substances.